


The End of the Summer

by Siobhan_Schuyler



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Stanford Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-15
Updated: 2006-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-19 07:44:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siobhan_Schuyler/pseuds/Siobhan_Schuyler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a standard clandestine visit to Stanford, Dean inadvertently meddles with fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The End of the Summer

He finds this place faintly ridiculous, truth be told. But as he speeds down Palm Drive faster than he should, the oddity that is Stanford is the least of Dean's worries.

Dad is in Chehalis on the tail of something that may or may not be a pack of loups-garous, but Dean's right here in Palo Alto because it's January and Sam didn't check in at Christmas and someone's gotta make sure the kid's still kicking. That's the extent of what Dad pretends he wants to know, but Dean wouldn't mind knowing that Sam's not only alive but also doing well in school, going out, getting drunk, sleeping around. In fact Dean would be happy with Sam just sleeping around, but he'd also settle on him just being plain happy. Sam's great white whale.

The schedule Dean's sweet-talked out of the Registrar's Office says Sam's three o'clock class should be letting in soon, and Dean's been sitting in the car long enough to have made campus security twitchy. He shakes off the lethargy the sun's lulled him into and drains the cold dregs of his seventh coffee since he left Seattle the night before. He drives around a bit, squinting through his shades; California is all sunshine and glare and he stops himself from wondering why Sam chose this place. He knows the answer, knows that Sam chose here because it was _away_ , which Dean finds ridiculous because away doesn't mean anything when you don't have a place to call home in the first place.

He finds a parking lot that all but requires him to sell an organ to pay for it, and wanders among sunny people apparently buoyed by their surroundings, by new classes, by the end of the summer—as if anyone can tell where seasons end and others begin in this place. He attracts a few looks from people who can't quite figure out why Dean seems so out of place; could be the coat, could be the walk, could be that he's got more purpose weighing at his shoulders than a dozen of these professionals in the making put together. Their collective air of naïve importance grates on him. But he's promised himself he wouldn't look down on scholastic endeavours, knows that these people don't deserve his derision just because he's pissed Sam left. Besides, they provide good cover, anonymity in numbers, and Dean's been able to visit Sam three times already without Sam ever noticing him hiding in plain sight.

It's an age-old trick, but the kid's either gone soft or the idea of seeing Dean here is so alien that he could look straight at him and never see him. Dean's relaxed his techniques accordingly. He has in the past sat in the same student pub Sam was getting wasted with friends in. He's followed him to his dorm after class and back the next morning for two whole days last winter. He's even sat through three hours of Law and Ethics once, two rows behind Sam, and the only thing he remembers from it is that there is no length of Sam's hair that doesn't make him look like he needs a haircut.

That's the plan today: sit in Sam's new three o'clock class and stare at the back of his head trying not to will him to turn around. Beats getting baked to a crisp sitting around the Quad waiting for his scrawny ass to wander out. People-watching outside of bars or stake-outs makes Dean bitchy and he's got to be back in Washington by tomorrow night anyway, so no time to fuck around. So to speak.

There's a couple of brightly-awned carts offering a variety of iced coffees at the entrance of Parson Building and, after several minutes of wheedling, Dean gets them to make him a plain freaking coffee. He ends up with a shot of hazelnut flavour anyway but lets it go. One of the first tenets of hunting is to pick your battles.

He finds hallowed halls stifling at the best of times so he dicks around outside for a while longer before ducking in, unseen among a gaggle of guys who look like they belong in a stadium somewhere. There are two kinds of people here. The gold ones laugh with bright, white teeth and take up more space than they need, comfortable and at home in the too-bright sun. The pale ones fade into the walls and try to take up as little space as possible as they shuffle past, the hunch of their shoulders and shifting eyes marking them as out of place as clearly as a bright neon sign above their heads would. It bugs Dean that he can’t remember which of the two Sam’s become.

Parson Building is newer than the places Dean's been to on campus so far, its architecture more modern, brighter, and altogether more inviting. Dean would stop and gawk at the atrium's domed skylight above him, but being static is being vulnerable, and instead he mills around with faux intent a moment longer, eyeing his watch surreptitiously, walking concentric circles in a collapsing orbit to Auditorium 4117. His environmentally friendly paper cup of coffee is long empty but he's holding on to it for effect; everyone here seems as over-caffeinated as he is. Another rule of tracking is, blend in.

Another is, don't be an idiot, a guideline Dean carelessly compromises when he nearly walks into the barrage of coeds heading into Sam's class. The graceless save involves something uncomfortably close to a pirouette and maybe even a little bit of windmilling, which clears him momentarily until he turns back and shoulder-checks a straggler.

"Jesus. _Sorry_!" Dean grunts, more at himself than anyone else.

She laughs. "It's all right."

Dean already has on his face a politely dismissive smile but it freezes when he double-takes. The girl is very very blonde and her lips are very very pink and she is very very pretty and tall and entirely Dean's type. She's what he conjures up when he thinks of California girls, and the smile she gives him is guileless but also reminds him of Sam at his least tolerant of bullshit.

There are people Dean's pretences stand no chance against and he knows this. He can pick them out as easily as they peg him. There was Josie Pollix in eighth grade, there was Mandy Miller at Dad's short-lived garage job in Delaware when he was eighteen, and there was Cassie until five weeks ago. And now there's this girl, her arms full of notes and textbooks and hand-outs, who's wearing the look of someone waiting for what comes next and hoping for your sake that it won't be a line. She's clutching a coffee of her own (more sensibly in a travel mug) and for some reason that seems to Dean like enough of an overture, like couples telling their friends they met while walking their dogs or reaching for the same melon at the grocery store.

"I'm Dean," he offers as a compromise between flirting and not, because Dean's never been sure where the line between sleazy and earnest really is.

Her lips (naturally pink? He suspects lipgloss; he loves girls who wear lipgloss, the way it's a concession to vanity without trying too hard) purse then part in a smile that tells Dean he's in—for now. "Jess. You going in?" She jerks her chin at the double swinging doors of Auditorium 4117, which only half disguises the quick sweep of her gaze downward.

Dean shifts on his feet, oddly aware of the discreet scrutiny. "Oh. No. I don't go here. I'm meeting someone. My brother," he adds quickly, and his sudden grin is, he hopes, no less charming for its authenticity. She quirks a pale eyebrow at him; he's still up. "So, ah, what class is this?" And it feels off to lie to her, even this lightly, even just to make conversation.

"Art History. Great way to meet guys," she grins, and her smile is a little crooked and a little dirty and more than a little complicit. Every nuance throws Dean off a bit; he's not used to unsure footing when it comes to girls, or to being the one read so easily. Her half-leer has settled into a smirk (definitely lipgloss) and for a moment Dean's not sure who's hooking who.

Another rule: don't let yourself be unnerved.

He clears his throat, feeling about for bearings of any kind. "Tell you what. You go learn about paintings and church ceilings, and after I can buy you a drink and you can tell me all about it."

She throws her shoulders back when she laughs, which normally would've attracted Dean's eyes lower, but he's somehow fixated, instead, on the swing of her hair against her bare arms.

"—about we go now? The bar terrace is open and it's too nice out to be stuck in there for three hours on a Friday."

Sizzling in the Quad suddenly sounds to Dean like the best idea _ever_.

*

Jessica Moore from Casa Loma, twenty-one, single, two sisters and one brother, majoring in organic chemistry and working part-time at the copy place on campus for beer money and her third of the rent for an apartment she shares with a drama student and an English lit drop-out.

She buys the next round and he's up again. His own frankness and the easiness with which it's coming to him stopped surprising him three drinks ago.

"Home," she wants to know, delicate elbows bent outward and propped on the arms of her chair.

"Lawrence, Kansas."

"Family?"

"Dad. Brother. He's an idiot."

"I got one of those too," she laughs, and now Dean knows it's lipgloss because he's seen her re-apply it with her pinky, right here in front of him, from a little plastic tub. Dean is ready to call that the sexiest little thing since bra straps showing under tank tops, another of life's little blessings she's also sporting.

"School?" she continues, licking beer foam from her top lip. She does this after each swallow, just like she puts down her glass perfectly aligned with the circle of condensation it left on the tabletop.

"Sporadically," Dean remembers to answer after a mouthful of his own. He's taken his shades off despite the brightness of mid-afternoon, and if he squints just so, there's a sort of aura-like halo around her, which usually happens on its own around beer number six. But this one hasn't been playing by the rules from the start and Dean stopped trying to keep up.

"Hobby?"

"Cars. Travelling. Classic horror movies. Anything after 1960 is an insult to the genre."

She laughs again, a loose little chuckle that could bring him down if wielded right. Then unknowingly, innocently, she goes in for the kill.

"Job?"

He wonders what it says about her that she's left this question for so late in the game, but he barely misses a beat when he says, "Paranormal investigator."

Her eyes and smile widen happily. "Really? Like ghosts and ouija boards?"

"Yes. But I left my ouija in my other pants," he deadpans, and it's probably the first time someone's reaction to the truth is to order another pitcher and segue into a discussion on the merits of hops.

*

The insides of her elbows are warm and a little moist when he presses her against the row of mailboxes in the lobby of her apartment building hours later. The sky's only started turning pink at the edges and the light in here is warped by the stained glass above the door. Dean's dimly aware of the half dozen people coming in and shouldering past them as Dean pushes his hands up her skirt. He doesn't realize how hot he's been until she pushes his coat off his shoulders and slides a hand up the back of his shirt, nearly soaked through with sweat where his skin's been sticking to the fabric.

They clamber up a flight of stairs and she backs him through a door, then through a messy living room and into a messier bedroom, where she pulls the shirt off of him completely when he takes his hands out of her clothes to push the hair from her face. Her bed sheets are a shade of lilac Dean would normally think offensive, but he finds himself trying really hard, pleasantly drunk as he is, not to wax poetic about the way it offsets the gold of her skin and how the worn cotton contrasts with the curve of her hips like, like—fuck, like something, Sam's the clever one, besides Dean's never been much for comparison. Take things at face-value and avoid the bullshit.

The flat of Dean's tongue traces a slow path up her spine as she's rummaging through her nightstand drawer with clumsy fingers, squirming when he hits a spot between her shoulder blades that makes her laugh. A door slams somewhere else in the apartment and the loud inflections of voices come to them muffled, distant then closer then distant again. A television is turned on in another room and the tinny sounds of a laugh-track is drowned out by her breathless groan when he pushes into her, her heels digging at the back of his thighs and her hair sticking to his mouth.

There's a rule, Dean faintly recalls, that says never to have your back to a door. But if he closes his eyes he loses all sense of direction, doesn't know where his safe exits are and what the closest sharp object is, only knows that the small hitch of her hips falters when he kisses her, and that the mewling moan she pants into his ear means _yes, like that_. He fights the urge to learn her, the signs and tells—her cryptology—because he also faintly remembers about the dangers of attachments, healthy or otherwise, and how the difference between the two is moot when it comes to being a Winchester.

She comes with a hand fisting the sheets and another digging bruises into his arm, and her skin tastes like salt and sweat and flowery fabric softener where he presses his face against the heaving curve of her neck to keep from crying out.

The room is darkening and they leave the lights off, lie on their backs to listen to her roommates move around the apartment. The phone rings and a shrill voice (the drama student, Dean guesses) yells intermittently, one half of a quarrel that sounds well-oiled and oft-rehearsed. Jess sleeps through the last half of it, the natural pout of her lips upturned a little at the ends, her fingers curled loosely around his wrist on her belly. Dean listens until the apartment goes quiet around them and the line of light beneath the door goes out. When it does, the room is pitch black for a moment, then settles into a dark shade of grey when Dean's eyes get used to the faint glow provided by a streetlamp half a block down the street.

Another one of their by-laws is, be the last one in and the first one out. But Dean finds that closing his eyes and turning into the heat of the soft body next to him is a much more sensible plan of action give the circumstances.

*

He wakes up to an empty bed, a bright room, and a fat tabby staring at him from the top of Jess' dresser. The red numbers of the alarm clock blink at him and it's far later than it ever is; this is the latest he's been left to sleep in in as long as he remembers. He locates his jeans and shirt and boots strewn on the carpet amidst skirts and panties and little tops with interesting cleavages. The door to Jess' closet hangs open, revealing a row of bare hangers and an empty shoe rack. Dean smiles.

The cat, perched among an assortment of beauty products, eyes Dean passively as he gets dressed listening to the noises outside the door. He recognizes her voice, the smile in it, and the sounds of cooking. When he cracks her bedroom door open an inch, the smell of breakfast is what lures him out. There's a clear path between him and the front door and he could slip out unseen, unheard, unaccountable. Cover your tracks. Make like a tree. Don't risk overstaying your welcome.

"Coffee?" Jess offers brightly by way of greeting when he pads into the kitchen with his boots in one hand. She's sitting on a stool and is all legs and long smooth arms in her tiny shorts and a faded AstroBoy t-shirt. She pushes a steaming mug into his hands with a smile and a freshly scrubbed face; no lipgloss, but Dean leans down to kiss her mouth anyway, the upcurve of it contagious. A girl with a knot of bright orange hair and a two-piece pajamas winks at him from the stove, where's she prodding at something with a spatula.

"Having breakfast with us, Dean?" the girl asks, and Dean should be more nervous than he is about someone he doesn't have anything on knowing his name. He should be more nervous about the way his slight hangover is dulling his instincts, about not knowing where Sam is at this precise moment, about the way his own hand rests comfortably on Jess' back, and the way her shoulder leans into his chest when he shifts to stand closer.

He should be nervous, and he should be out of here. He should be halfway back to Washington by now, with good news for Dad and the satisfaction of a job well done for himself.

He takes the free stool and tosses his boots to the scuffed linoleum. "Sure. What are we having?"

*

Jess' roommate leaves for work after breakfast and they fuck again, too lazy to undress or to make it to her bed. It's high noon and hotter than hell again but they lounge on the couch afterwards anyway, skin sticking to skin, the TV on and an oscillating fan whirring at them from the corner of the room. The drapes are pulled and the room is the weird sort of dusty semi-dark you only ever get when it's really sunny out. Showcase is showing a remake of _Psycho_ and Dean groans, wrestling her for the remote, which she pitches clear across the room. She's got a good arm.

"When do you need to meet your brother?" she murmurs into his shoulder, and for a moment he's too busy tangling his fingers in her hair to remember to answer, or that he doesn't know the answer when he really, really should. It's important: always have a plan.

"I'll catch him later," he mumbles into her mouth. "Doesn't matter."

There's a swell of dramatic music on TV, and a woman screams in a way Dean's heard people do for real. "I'm supposed to go to this party tonight. There's a guy Jennifer's been trying to hook me up with, a real catch, apparently. Gonna be a _lawyer_." He feels her smirk against his skin, and the way her thighs shift, her bare knee coming to rest against the inside of his thigh.

"Is that right?" he plays along. "I hate lawyers on principle. I bet I could take him."

"We could go and find out." She curves into the trail of Dean's fingertips up her side. "Or we could stay in, order some food, tell lawyer-guy to fuck off, and get my roommates to get lost till Monday."

Always leave yourself options. Never commit to anything you're not sure will turn out in your favor. Don't take unnecessary risks. Her hand is warm on his belly, fingertips tucked into the waist of his jeans.

"Got anywhere to be, Dean?"

And he doesn't, not right now and maybe not for a little while, because what you want to be able to say after a successful hunt is, you should've seen the other guy.

  



End file.
